Reference to background art herein is not to be construed as an admission that such art constitutes common general knowledge in Australia or elsewhere.
Excavators on mining sites move payloads in the form of excavated material. The excavated material may be delivered to trucks, conveyor hoppers or other destinations, both productive and non-productive. The trucks deliver the excavated material to further destinations on the mining site.
Currently, excavators may weigh the payloads in the excavator before dumping them, and communicate with a truck when delivering a payload thereto. Communication between the excavator and the truck may allow the excavator to, for example, establish the payload weight that is delivered to the truck.
However, current excavator based weighing systems that do not communicate with the truck are unable to determine whether the payload picked up by the excavator is actually delivered to the truck. For example, part of the payload may be dumped back onto the ground during delivery to the truck, or the whole payload may be dumped onto the ground.
Furthermore, excavator communication systems cannot establish the destination of the payload. Determining the destination of a payload allows monitoring of payload transport productivity.
In addition, retrofitting a communication system to the truck may be expensive and, therefore, not commercially viable when a fleet of trucks require communication systems.